On Shabbat Parshat Pinchas, a father of nine sat down to a Shabbat table in the Jezreel Valley. By the end of Shabbat, he was gone, and his wife was a widow.
Rav Mordechai Dovid Shteglitz, a teacher at Talmud Torah Emes Derech, died suddenly that Shabbat. Hours earlier, the house had been quiet and warm. Then came Hatzalah, the neighbors, and a reality his wife and nine children are still trying to absorb.
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For more than a decade, he taught the children of Givat HaMoreh and Afula Illit. His students describe a teacher with patience for every child who walked into his classroom, one who gave them far more than what was on the page.
On Saturday Night, thousands came to Kfar Gidon for the funeral. That is what a decade of quiet devotion looks like when it is counted.
His widow woke up to a different fight. Rav Shteglitz gave his life to Torah and chinuch, not to building savings, and the family's modest income ended the day he did. She is now grieving, raising nine children, and trying to work out how to put food on the table, all at once.
She wrote it herself, and there is no softening it. Rebbetzin Shteglitz wrote, "I don't know how to feed them, clothe them, or help them grieve a father who was here Friday night and gone by Motzaei Shabbos".
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Rav Avrohom Halevi Lipshitz, Rabbi of Kfar Gidon, saw the situation up close and issued a public appeal calling on Klal Yisrael to step in for the family.
The goal is $100,000, enough to steady a family of ten and keep a roof over nine orphans. So far, $3,873 has come in, which leaves $96,127 still to raise before this widow can stop worrying about groceries and start grieving her husband.
For years, this teacher carried other people's children through their days. His nine are the ones who need carrying now.
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